A study of the issue of Common Grace: the origin of the teaching, the debate and church controversy of the doctrine in the Christian Reformed Church. The result of the controversy--beginning of the Protestant Reformed Churches. By Prof. Herman Hanko, emeritus professor of the Protestant Reformed Theological School.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Is Love Consistant with Justice and Wrath? (19a)

.Dear Forum members:. Before I take up an investigation of the proof texts for the aspect of common grace I am investigating, namely, God’s attitude of love, favor, kindness and blessing to all men without distinction, I must treat objections that have been raised against the view of grace defended in these articles and which was sent to me; they involve important questions and demand an answer. I do so gladly, for they really bring us to the heart of the whole issue that confronts us.. I am going to summarize the argument here and perhaps take a few quotes from the letter. Before I do this, however, it should be noted that the correspondent asks questions and makes observations, not so much because he differs with what I write and wants to defend common grace, but because he hears these objections made against our position and is interested in a correct answer..* * * * In general, a major concern of the writer is a negative attitude that many take towards the PR position that their viewpoint does not do justice to God’s attributes of mercy, love, kindness, etc., but tends to present God as tyrannical and possessing attributes at odds with His goodness.. Although without his approval, the writer refers to one acquaintance as saying, I like my God a lot more than the God of the PRC. The explanation of this remark, in the writer’s own language is: “He wanted to preserve the view that God’s attitude to the sinner undergoes development. God gives a period of probation in which the sinner is tested. As the sinner grows older and goes on in the course of sin, God reacts accordingly, until the sinner is eventually ripe for judgment. God was prepared at the beginning of the sinner’s life to give him the leeway to repent that eventually he takes away.”. The writer goes on to describe those who disagree with the position I outlined as “involving a negative and malicious view of God: Hoeksema at one point used the analogue of a farmer fattening up cattle for slaughter for God’s dealings with the non-elect. God almost seems to want to trip them up, and in a cruel and malicious sort of way to place them in circumstances he knows very well will simply add to their eventual misery, talking delight in this misery in an almost Satanic way.”. There were other questions that need to be addressed, but I want to comment on these remarks, first of all. While I think these matters are extremely important and these questions raised need to be answered, I am struck by the fact that some of these same objections were raised against the fathers at Dordt by the Arminians. You can find a list of these objections in the Conclusion of the Canons of Dordrecht. I cannot quote the entire conclusion, but do quote a few statements that reflect the same position that is described above. After setting down the doctrines of sovereign grace, including the truth of sovereign and double predestination, the Conclusion says of these doctrines, “And this is the perspicuous, simple, and ingenuous declaration of the orthodox doctrine respecting the five articles which have been controverted in the Belgic churches (that is, the churches found in the Lowlands including Belgium and the Netherlands, HH), and the rejection of the errors, with which they have for some time been troubled. This doctrine the synod judges to be drawn from the Word of God, and to be agreeable to the confessions of the Reformed churches.”.Then turning to the Arminians and their unprincipled attacks against the Reformed faith, the Synod calls attention to their distortions and slanders of these doctrines: “Whence it clearly appears that some whom such conduct by no means became (that is, such conduct was not becoming to the Arminians, HH) have violated all truth, equity, and charity, in wishing to persuade the public:.“That the doctrine of the Reformed churches concerning predestination, and the points annexed to it, by its own genius and necessary tendency, leads off the minds of men from all piety and religion; … that it makes God the author of sin, unjust, tyrannical, hypocritical; … that, if the reprobate should even perform truly all the works of the saints, their obedience would not in the least contribute to their salvation: that the same doctrine teaches that God, by a mere arbitrary act of His will, without the least respect or view to any sin, has predestinated the greatest part of the world to eternal damnation, and has created them for this purpose; that many children of the faithful are torn, guiltless, from their mother’s breasts and tyrannically plunged into hell … and many other things of the same kind, which the Reformed churches not only do not acknowledge, but even detest with their whole soul.”. The fact of the matter is that the objections raised against the position that God is always good to His elect, but is always filled with wrath against the reprobate has been a doctrine criticized throughout the history of the church. Augustine, the venerable bishop of Hippo (d. 430 AD) faced and answered the same charges that were raised against his doctrine by the Pelagians. Calvin repeatedly answered those who objected to His views with equally scurrilous objections. He answered these objections most clearly in his booklet on predestination and providence. (This has recently been republished under the title “Calvin’s Calvinism: A Treatise on Predestination and Providence” and is available from the Reformed Free Publishing Association. It contains Calvin’s answer to such objections raised especially by Georgias, Pighius and Bolsec, all opponents of the doctrine of sovereign predestination.) These objections have been repeatedly raised since the time of Dordt against those who taught the same truths.. But this historical fact does not release us from the responsibility of answering these objections again.. One remark needs to be made at the outset about the view that God reacts to man’s faith or unbelief and gradually develops in His opposition to them. This view is currently being taught by the “Process Theologians” who have abandoned the doctrines of sovereign grace. To hold to such a view as Process Theology teaches is not only to deny the immutability of God (and thus His eternity), but it is also to make predestination conditional; that is, God only reacts to man’s acceptance or rejection of the gospel. The Canons of Dordt were specifically written against the same Arminian rejection of the sovereignty of God in predestination. Let anyone who holds this view be aware of the fact that he is taking a position contrary the doctrines of the Reformed and Presbyterian Churches as set forth in the Canons and the Westminster Confession of faith. And let it also be understood that if God can and does change His divine mind over against the wicked, He can change His mind also about His people and cast them into hell, after all. Such a view is too awful to contemplate.

The fundamental and underlying error of those who want a kinder, more merciful, and more gracious God than seems to be the case with a God who is sovereign in all that He does is a definition of kindness, mercy, and grace that is learned more from human relationships than from Scripture’s revelation of God in all His perfections. We may not and do not dare define God’s grace and mercy in terms of our own ideas of such attributes. We must let God Himself define His own attributes and we have no choice but to bow – whether we like it or not. God must remain God and He cannot be defined in our terms. Doing such a foolish thing is to construct an idol..One of the chief fallacies of such definitions of God is an almost total disregard for God’s holiness and justice. So broadly are grace, mercy, kindness, etc., defined that they swallow up to the point of disappearance the great truths that God is the Holy One and is just and righteous in all He does. In His holiness God hates sin and cannot tolerate sin’s presence even for a moment. To tolerate, overlook, or make light of, sin to any degree is to make God less holy than He is. Holiness by definition is not only pure unblemished freedom from sin, but it is also a terrible abhorrence of sin. This abhorrence of sin is so complete that punishment of the sinner is necessary to retain God’s holiness intact. If, in any way, punishment of sin is minimized, holiness is lost. The more kind, merciful and gracious men want to make God, the less holy and just God becomes..Herman Hoeksema is correct in his Reformed Dogmatics when he makes all God’s communicable attributes subordinate to and manifestations of the one essential attribute of holiness. (Herman Hoeksema, Reformed Dogmatics [ Grand Rapids, Reformed Free Publishing Association, 2004] 96-98, 135-144.) It ought to be clear that kindness, benevolence and mercy are not more important than wrath against sin and God’s just anger against the sinner. Nor can mercy and kindness be set over against justice so as to modify justice, mitigate the severity of it, or even swallow it up or push it into oblivion. God’s attributes are all one in Him..Mercy and justice must and do agree with each other. This agreement between mercy and justice is fully revealed in the cross. Mercy is and can be shown to sinful man only on the basis of Christ’s meritorious sacrifice. Sin has to be paid for, or God is no more just. If God reveals His mercy (grace, love, compassion, kindness) to man, it can only be done through the payment and satisfaction of the debt sinful man owes God. Christ pays that debt..This necessity of atonement is what pushes the defender of a general and common grace or mercy to universalize the cross of Christ. Any man with any sense of the atonement must realize that the atonement of Christ is the only possibility of any mercy at all towards men..This fundamental truth is the reason why the Belgic confession speaks of election as the manifestation of God’s mercy and reprobation as the manifestation of God’s justice (Article 16). But this does not mean that God’s justice is not revealed in His favor and love towards His people. His justice is revealed in the cross, for the terrible suffering of our Savior was God’s exclamation mark behind the importance of His justice in showing grace to a sinner. Kindness and grace to the sinner without the cross is divinely impossible.With warmest regards,.Prof Hanko